Gasoline–electric hybrids have always led the market with fuel-saving technology: start/stop engine systems, Atkinson-cycle-engine configurations, low-rolling-resistance tires, and slippery aerodynamics. Now these cars feature driver aids to help you bump up your mpg even more.
1. Infiniti M35h Hybrid
This car takes driver coaching to the extreme, with an Eco mode that varies the resistance on the gas pedal to encourage you to accelerate slowly. The M35h will also count and display all the miles that the car has driven on electricity alone. In our test car's case, it was more than 2000 miles for the life of the car at a time when the Infiniti had been driven 16,000 total miles. That certainly makes you feel good as a driver: It means 1 out of every 8 miles we drove in the Infiniti burned no gasoline. The dash has a graph that displays six 2-minute intervals of fuel-economy performance, showing the driver how he's driven in the past 12 minutes and how much electricity he's regenerated, in watt-hours. We averaged around 30.
2. BMW ActiveHybrid 5
This complex-looking double bar graph shows 1-minute fuel-economy averages for every minute of a 16-minute trip. Mirrored below the fuel-economy bars you see the percentage of electric assist and other high-tech hybrid functions. This setup focused our attention on trying to improve the mpg, but the system isn't quite perfect. We found that a minute is too long to wait for immediate feedback yet too short to be helpful on a longer trip.
3. Honda Civic Hybrid
A faint green glow in the instrument cluster helps remind you if you're driving the Civic in an eco-friendly way, or it glows blue if you're being particularly lead-footed. In terms of driver information, the Honda hybrid's dash shows current range and fuel-economy history for the previous four consecutive trips, defining each trip by when you turn the car on and off. A smaller graphic on the instrument panel shows a mini-version of the current trip history. This is a nice detail but one that needs a better design: Because the trips reset when you turn the car on and off, a quick rest stop will lose your oldest trip and prevent you from keeping track of the average fuel economy of your current journey. A smaller graphic display dials up a lifetime Eco Score. Leaf images mean you're driving efficiently; the number of leaves displayed withers when you're a lead-foot. (These lifetime points are erasable, however, so you need not be dogged by your hotdogging past.)
4. Kia Optima Hybrid
The Optima will display average miles per gallon every 2.5 minutes for the past half-hour. But there's another, much more curious green-shaming display: the Eco Score number, which comes with a corresponding graphic collection of flower images. A driver's score depends upon factors including throttle position, 5-mile periodic samples of average fuel economy, the state of charge of the drive battery, and the ambient air temperature. The better you do in these categories, the more flowers you see. For whatever reason (apparently only three digits will do), the score resets to zero if a driver reaches 1000. Optima Hybrid owners have started a 1000 Eco Points Club whose members have reached the big number.
5. Toyota Prius v
It's no wonder geeks and techies like the Prius hybrids, which provide a wealth of technical information to liven up the drive. The centre console displays how many watt-hours the car has generated during a trip, so the driver can equate the energy to the use of a common household light bulb (for instance, 30 watt-hours is the same as a 60-watt light bulb burning for half an hour). In addition, the bar graph displays average fuel economy in 1-minute increments for 15 minutes of a trip. We like that the console display screen also displays conventional information such as average speed, elapsed time, and range. What we don't like is that this screen is buried three pages deep in the menu.
6. Acura ILX Hybrid
The coaching display in the Acura shows fuel-economy averages for three trips, though we found the exact miles-per-gallon and the distance travelled for each trip too vague to be useful. However, there is an instant fuel-efficiency indicator that displays in the same instrument-panel box as the average trip economy. Efficiency is represented by a big green circle that shrinks whenever you waste gas. The ILX info is the same as for Honda's Civic Hybrid, except for the graphic display layout. Also like the Civic Hybrid, the Acura shows lifetime eco points, which can be reset. What we're wondering is, will this feature be a headache down the line when drivers want to sell their hybrid ILX? For example, consider a potential used-hybrid-car buyer. Will she pay more if the lifetime score shows that the seller has been kind to the car, or drop her offer if she sees a bad lifetime score, or none at all?
7. Chevy Malibu Eco
The Malibu Eco shows the driver two lighted displays of the car itself, one on a small screen on the instrument panel and another on the large screen on the console that's also used for the radio and climate controls. Both show the power flow from the engine and drive motor to the drive wheels, as well as whether the car is regenerating or not and when the system is charging the battery. That's helpful for teaching drivers when the car is using the electric-drive motor or the gasoline engine, but not terribly technical - the feature doesn't give any number. We find that unusual, because most General Motors' engineers we know are die-hard techies and data fiends.
8. VW Jetta Hybrid
Where a tachometer is normally found, the Jetta Hybrid has a large, round gauge that shows energy flow on a scale of one to 10, as well as an instant readout of the driver's aggressiveness. A small, square display to the right of this gauge also shows energy flow between engine, wheels, and battery. On the large console display, a bar graph displays 30 1-minute intervals of the percentage of full-battery drive power. This display took us the longest time to decipher. In fact, we're still working on it.
9. Ford Focus Electric
The MyFord application for Ford's Focus Electric lets the owner check via smartphone whether the car is plugged in, the battery charge and range, and if the charging has been interrupted because the cord was unplugged. It also shows a summary of the car's latest trip, distances, and places the car went. Silly things, however, include dumbed-down labels such as My Go Times. Go times?
10. Chevrolet Volt
When three-time Formula One champ Jackie Stewart was teaching smooth-driving techniques, he had students drive a Ford station wagon with a large salad bowl mounted on its hood. Inside the bowl was a tennis ball, and students had to keep it from rolling out. The Volt uses a digital rendering of this antique analogue teaching aid - an "efficiency gauge" in the middle of the instrument-panel gauge cluster. There's a green ball that changes colour to yellow when you're going heavy on the gas, and it moves forward and backward in its window depending on how aggressively you use the brake or accelerator, almost exactly the way the tennis ball would do in a salad bowl.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please adhere to proper blog etiquette when posting your comments. This blog owner will exercise his absolution discretion in allowing or rejecting any comments that are deemed seditious, defamatory, libelous, racist, vulgar, insulting, and other remarks that exhibit similar characteristics. If you insist on using anonymous comments, please write your name or other IDs at the end of your message.